


Six Years Seven Centuries

by zzzett



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adam is Saved, Alternate Season/Series 11, Angst, Cage Trauma, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 17:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8110330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zzzett/pseuds/zzzett
Summary: At Stull Cemetery, the Cage is opened again to release its last denizens. Or what remains of them. Sam and Dean try to pick up the pieces as they face the outcome of an old irresponsibility.





	

They saw Michael, formless light and noise, ascend from the Cage and the noise gained meaning:

_Take care of him._

_Please._

Then he was gone, the Pit closed, leaving behind a half-brother the Winchesters were too late to save.

He looked taller than they remembered, and much skinnier, still wearing the familiar denim and plaid from years ago. His unruly blond hair looked the same. He stood still with his back turned to them, head raised high to look up at the late afternoon sky. A sight he must have missed, if not forgotten.

They couldn’t speak for a while, not even to let him know of their presence. Sam glanced at his big brother, saw his lips stuttering the way they did when he was lost, and the moist glint in his eyes when he felt crushed. He could almost see Dean’s train of thought now, the guilt he’d refused to acknowledge for years: _I chose to leave him in Hell, abandoned him for Sam, I made that choice, he was innocent and I left him, Dad wanted to protect him and I left him, I left him-_

A gentle hand on his shoulder halted Dean’s thoughts, returning him to the moment and he glanced back at the brother he chose to save, meeting a sad yet encouraging smile. “We’ve got him back,” Sam whispered. “We didn’t abandon him.”

The words were meant to comfort, he knew. He just didn’t believe them when Sam’s own gaze reflected back the guilt. With an exhale, Dean nodded just as Adam was slowly turning around at their sounds.

The Winchesters saw his face after six years. He saw theirs after seven hundred. 

He blinked.

Dean braced himself and took a slow step forward. “Adam,” he called out softly, “it’s us. You’re out now… You remember us, don’t you?” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Your brothers?”

Adam stood still with a blank expression, his eyes looking unfairly old for a young man as they flicked between the two hunters. His silence was unbearable, for the Winchesters knew they couldn’t begin to understand his mind at this point; had anything been left of the Adam they knew with all that he had endured for much, much longer than both of them? 

Sam too stepped forward. “Adam-”

“Enough.”

His voice was soft, but lower than it should have been at his age, if such a thing still counted. On Earth, twenty year old Adam Milligan wasn’t supposed to sound like a whiskey-weary, over thirty Dean Winchester. But in Hell..? 

“I don’t care anymore,” he continued, his gaze frighteningly blank. “Leave me alone.” He looked away and they could only stand dumbstruck, side-glancing each other. 

Dean took a deep breath and tried again: “Leaving you down there has no excuse.” He tried to suppress the slight waver in his voice. “I know it’s been too long… I know you’ve endured the unimaginable and I know it doesn’t matter how damn sorry I am.” He couldn’t help the blur in his vision now, only accelerated by the moist gulp he heard from Sam. “But I never forgot it, kid. I never forgot I took Sam and left you there; first in that room, then in the Cage. I tried to save you both, god I tried, but-”

“I said, enough.” His voice came stronger, but Adam didn’t even glance at them this time, his stoic face unchanging. “That got old years ago so don’t bother. Yes, they don’t give a damn and yes, I’m stuck here forever.”

They both felt a chill then, sickeningly moving down their arms. It reminded Sam of Lucifer’s touch itself, and he wanted to scream and cry and retch all at once at the unfairness of it all, but what had they expected? Beside him, Dean had stopped breathing, his eyes wide in horror as he stared on helplessly at their little brother.

Adam looked back at them again, his features moving a fraction indecipherably before letting out an ironic huff, the remnant of a chuckle. “Good job with the sky, but Dean crying over me? That’s overdoing it,” he muttered, then turned back around to gaze at the imaginary ceiling of his prison nonchalantly.

Dean inhaled. Only, it sounded like dying. 

In an instant, Sam stormed off from his side to Adam and put a firm hand on their brother’s shoulder- Adam stiffened under the touch but didn’t move, expecting pain and torture to follow that he no longer resisted. Sam’s chest tightened in sympathy, recognizing that sick anticipation but he held on, waiting for Adam to grasp the feeling, to register it.

“This is real,” Sam said, firm and slow to make his point clear to a foggy mind he related all too well. “Feel it, Adam. You know me. I was with you.”

It felt like forever before Adam moved, slowly turning his head to look at the large palm covering his shoulder. The touch was warm, determined, _familiar_. His gaze followed the length of Sam’s arm up to his face- gentle, hazel, aged. Free. 

The horrible blank expression remained, but something passed over Adam’s eyes - _were they always grey? No, bluer before._ Sam wanted to call it hope but it looked too ancient; the tiniest glint of something shattered way too many times, buried way too deep.

“This isn’t-”

“It is.” He gripped Adam’s other shoulder to emphasize. “We are. It’s us, Sam and Dean, in the flesh.”

A couple feet away, Dean could do nothing but watch as an ironic copy of the scene where he once tried to ground a mentally broken brother played out before him.

“You got away, Adam,” Sam continued softly at the silence. His warm eyes bored into Adam’s cold ones, trying to find and coax out the spirit he knew to be there somewhere, his hold firm - _real_ \- on Adam’s shoulders. “We got you out. You’re with us, you’re free. Please, believe it now.”

It was all they could ask of him. And all they could do now was to hold him as he would inevitably fall under the weight of reality. It was no less than what Sam and Dean always did for each other, and no less than what their brother deserved.

It was slow, minutes and eras slow, but Adam’s face did start to change; his eyes slowly widened to reveal his true age, a boy -a very old boy- and his once lifeless features morphed into something unbearable before them. Centuries’ worth of desperation and longing seemed to catch up with him in a matter of seconds. He took in a deep, wet breath, and lost his weary old voice for a lonely young whisper:

“S-Sam?”

With a relieved smile, strong arms wrapped around his sickly form and held him through growing tremors and weakening knees. “Yeah,” Sam breathed, a warm hand going to the back of his brother’s head, “it’s me. It’s okay. It’s me.”

Adam’s glassy eyes found Dean -still standing there like a slowly crumbling statue- and he let out a choked sound into Sam’s shoulder, his body sagging against Sam’s large form and clinging for dear life. 

Finally, Dean found the strength to move. He walked to his younger siblings with heavy steps, to Adam’s low babbling and Sam’s gentle shushing. Sam turned around and let their broken brother into his arms- Dean caught the kid as his legs no longer carried him, and crouched down slowly with him, Sam following along.

The three sons of John Winchester shared a desperate embrace on the grassy ground, finally all together again where they had last been, six years and seven centuries ago.

“I’m so sorry, kid,” Dean breathed out, holding Adam’s pale face in his hands. The boy’s expression couldn’t be defined; he was probably fighting not to lose his grip on reality, grey eyes blank and mouth going slack. “You’re back with us now, back with your family. We’ll never let you go again. Never.”

Adam’s eyes refocused for a moment on Dean’s, and a shadow of that smartass kid returned alongside a single tear and a thin trail of blood down his nose. 

“… Some family.” 

Then his eyes rolled back and he sagged in their hold, unconscious.

**Author's Note:**

> I may write a sequel, I'm not sure.


End file.
